


Conquering Heroes

by angelgrace0409



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Friendship, M/M, Pre-Slash, post STID
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-24
Updated: 2013-09-24
Packaged: 2017-12-27 13:15:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/979367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelgrace0409/pseuds/angelgrace0409
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jim has questions about the potential fallout from Bones's actions at the end of STID.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conquering Heroes

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't written any fic in about four years, and nothing in the Star Trek universe. But since Jim/Bones has pretty much eaten my brain the past few months, here's me dipping my toe in...

“Hey, Bones?”

“Yeah, Jim?” Leonard replied absently, not looking up from his PADD.

“What did you tell the Admiralty about how you, um…cured me?”

Now he did look up, surprise evident on his face. “You haven’t read the reports?”

Jim shrugged. “Can’t say I really want to read about my own death. I know I’ll have to eventually, but…not yet.”

Leonard’s expression softened, and he stood up and moved to sit next to Jim on the couch. “Anything in particular you want to know?”

“Mostly how you managed to avoid a court-martial,” he replied with a quiet laugh. “I’m pretty sure that injecting your dead captain with an untested serum made from superhuman blood doesn’t exactly meet the medical ethics smell test.”

Leonard grimaced. “Yeah, well, we might not have been entirely forthcoming in the reports about just how dead you actually were.”

“We?”

“Spock and I. I was ready to throw myself on my sword, tell them everything, because I honestly didn’t give a damn what they did to me if it meant that you were alive. Spock pointed out that you probably wouldn’t like that. I think his exact words were ‘The Captain will be most displeased if he has to replace his Chief Medical Officer due to bureaucratic regulations.’”

Jim’s eyes widened. “No shit?”

“’Bout knocked me on my ass when I realized what he meant. So we put our heads together and came up with a story that covered the salient points but didn’t quite meet the requirement for ‘the whole truth’. He even sat down with every member of the crew who saw you in that body bag, made sure that they were okay with what we were doing. Not one of ‘em objected—all they cared about was that the man who saved all our lives was alive himself.”

Jim swallowed hard, and when he looked up to meet his best friend’s eyes, Leonard could see the unshed tears shining there. “You could’ve lost everything, Bones.”

“Already been through that once in my life—I got through it eventually. And…” he hesitated, unsure if he should continue.

“What?”

He took a deep breath. “You’re my best friend, Jim, and the closest thing to family that I’ve got these days. When I saw you…like that…all I could think was that losing you was going to destroy me. There’s no way I’d stay on the _Enterprise_ without you to tell me that it wasn’t the biggest damn fool idea in the known universe. So I could either let you stay dead, and lose everything to my own anger and fear and grief and the bottom of a bourbon bottle, or I could do everything in my power to bring you back, ethics and the Admiralty be damned. I never even hesitated.” He smiled, and bumped his shoulder against Jim’s. “Everyone on that ship knows you would have done the same for any one of us, with no consideration for life, limb, or sanity. In fact, that’s what got us into this mess in the first place, you and your damned hero complex,” he teased.

Jim slouched deeper into the couch, leaning to rest his head against Leonard’s shoulder. “When I was a kid, I used to wonder if there could have been some way for my dad to survive the _Kelvin_ , some scenario where he could have made it onto the last shuttle or something. I kept thinking there had to be a way, and I was angry that he didn’t figure out what it was. But that day, making the decision to go into the warp core—I finally got it. I knew exactly what he must have been thinking, and I knew that the only way to honor his sacrifice was to do the same thing.”

“Dammit, kid,” Leonard grumbled, throwing his arm around Jim’s shoulders and pulling him closer, “wasn’t saving the world once enough?”

He chuckled. “I dunno, I’ve kind of got a taste for it now.” He tilted his head back, blue eyes sparkling. “Anyway, there’s one big difference between me and my dad.”

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“He didn’t have a Bones to save him.”

Leonard blushed, the air between them starting to crackle with tension. “I don’t plan on makin’ a habit of bringing you back from the dead, so you’d best not get in the habit of dyin’,” he drawled, voice gruff.

“It’s not an experience I’m looking to repeat anytime soon. The recovery is a bitch.”

“Just because you don’t like to sit still for more than five minutes…”

“Bones, you yell at me if I get up to do anything besides use the bathroom!”

“Yeah, because you were dead, Jim!” Leonard’s voice cracked, and Jim could see the fear on his best friend’s face.

“Hey,” he said softly, reaching out to catch Leonard’s hand in his. “I’m alive now, because of you, and I’m not going anywhere.”

“Except back into space, with all the crazy aliens and venomous plants and God knows what kind of weird-ass animals you’ll find on Planet How-Can-Jim-Get-Hurt-Today,” he groused.

“And you’ll be with me, right?”

He dropped his head back, eyes drifting closed. “Where the hell else would I be, kid?”

Jim squeezed his hand. “You and me, Bones. We conquered death, now we’re going to conquer the universe.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“An idiot that you followed into space. Actually, an idiot that you smuggled into space. And then brought back from the dead. So, really, you’ve had your chances to get rid of me, Bones, and you’ve done a piss-poor job of it.”

“I know 57 ways to kill you without leaving any evidence.”

“And waste all your brilliant work?”

“I hate you. A lot.”

“You love me.”

Leonard snorted.

“You totally do. Underneath all that Southern-fried grumpiness, you love me.”

“Maybe. A little.”

“You _resurrected_ me. Does that make me your god?” 

“Back to hating you.”

“Liar.”

“Dammit, Jim, don’t you ever shut up?”

Jim smirked. Curling into Leonard, he wrapped his free arm around the other man’s waist, and allowed his eyes to close. “Love you too, Bones.”


End file.
